In this June 13, 2012 file photo, tourists visit the deck of the USS Battleship Texas as she lists slightly on the port side, in Houston. The 100-year-old museum is closed indefinitely after several leaks flooded the vessel that fought in World Wars I and II.

In this June 13, 2012 file photo, tourists visit the deck of the USS Battleship Texas as she lists slightly on the port side, in Houston. The 100-year-old museum is closed indefinitely after several leaks

Norman Snipe climbs out of a tank on the port side of the USS Texas after repositioning a pump hose Wednesday, June 13, 2012, in Houston. The 100-year-old battleship's hull sprung a leak five days ago and has been taking on as much as 1,000 gallons of seawater every minute as workers struggle to contain it.

Norman Snipe climbs out of a tank on the port side of the USS Texas after repositioning a pump hose Wednesday, June 13, 2012, in Houston. The 100-year-old battleship's hull sprung a leak five days ago and has

In this June 13, 2012 file photo, men work to pump water from below the decks of the Battleship Texas as she lists slightly on the port side, in Houston. The 100-year-old museum is closed indefinitely after several leaks flooded the vessel that fought in World Wars I and II.

In this June 13, 2012 file photo, men work to pump water from below the decks of the Battleship Texas as she lists slightly on the port side, in Houston. The 100-year-old museum is closed indefinitely after

Bristling with big guns and macho combat prowess, the USS Texas is a steel embodiment of its namesake state. In World War II, the 29,500-ton dreadnought backed Allied attacks at Normandy, North Africa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. It was the first ship to launch an airplane at sea, mount anti-aircraft guns and gain recognition as a U.S. National Historic Landmark.

Today, the century-old battleship, riddled with rust and imperiled by a foe it never was designed to fight — a moribund economy — is struggling for its life. Since early June, the vessel has been struck by successive leaks, some shooting more than 1,000 gallons of water into the vessel every minute.

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Earlier plans to repair the vessel and display it in an out-of-water setting were scuttled, at least for the present, by the discovery that the project's cost might approach $75 million, roughly three times the amount voters approved in a 2007 bond election.

So far, he says, repairs to the ship have cost more than $300,000. Until the state releases $25 million in bond money in September, fixes will be paid through the agency's emergency funds.

“There's absolutely no road map. There's no ship like it, of this size and magnitude,” the director says. When the USS Texas arrived at its La Porte berth in 1948 as the nation's first memorial battleship, the prodigious floating arsenal had only a tenuous connection with the state. The people of Texas, whose self-image is as muscular as the dreadnought's, soon took the ship into their hearts.

In the year that ended last Sept. 1, 103,000 visitors toured the vessel, almost half of them children.

To Battleship Texas Foundation director Bruce Bramlett, the vessel is a tribute to a generation of selfless warriors. “The ship never shirked its duty,” he says.

Bramlett's group has contributed about $3 million of its $4 million pledge toward the ship's preservation. He says the prospect of losing the ship to deterioration is unfathomable.

“If we're going to cast our history away,” he says, “go bulldoze the Alamo. Go ahead and take the (San Jacinto) monument down. Go to Washington and pull that stuff down. This is our history. The things we preserve are a testament to who we are as a people.”

Scott Boruff, Park and Wildlife's deputy executive director for operations, cites three options for raising money for the battleship's long-term preservation: the Legislature, private donations and the federal government. “I don't think we can sit on our haunches and wait,” he says.